Happy Holidays!

2008
Warm Wishes this Holiday Season

Love from our family,
The Van Alstynes

Monique, Maarten, Marek, Mark and Suzi

Sending Smiles throughout 2009


Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Our triplets have certainly kept us on our toes this past year. We make time to slow down and celebrate the moment. Our blog entries primarily have been photos of the growing loves our lives, Monique, Marek and Maarten. Witnessing their enfoldment in personalities, motor skills, verbal acquisition, and love for books continue to baffle us.

We cannot reiterate how grateful we are to be parents and share our love for learning, family, adventure and practicing the Golden Rule. We have learned patience over the year, especially with ourselves. We’ve conquered more in 2008 than we ever imagined.

Suzi, as many know, grew very ill with a MRSA staph infection that required hospitalization and we needed outside help and family’s assistance as much as possible to care for the little loves and still allow Mark to go to work. We thank so many of you out there for loving on Monique, Marek and Maarten; we truly could not have such healthy, well-adjusted little loves today without your meeting their needs while Suzi had to recuperate for four months. Those of you who are just learning of this, know that there are angels and we have met them. When in need, do ask us for assistance, we’ll do our best to help.

Suzi’s mother and Mark’s parents were all here for the birth of the little loves. Thank Goodness! 
Suzi’s family came to visit us all for Thanksgiving, 2007, to meet the trio and really help with the beginning of the rest of our lives as parents. We so appreciated everyone making the journey as we know how arduous traveling is with kids, now. Grandpa Jim and Grandma Pat stayed for Christmas of 2007; Grandma Pat stayed on for the next eight months on-and-off while Suzi was recovering and having her helpful night caring and daytime assistance was priceless. We were blessed in February to have Nana and Papa Van Alstyne here to give us all a little more sleep, help and even a night away at a very relaxing nearby hotel for Valentine’s Day which was very thoughtful and much appreciated.

Mark continues to work at the Small Business Administration in Denver, Colorado helping them refine and make their fiscal files run more efficiently between Washington, DC and Denver. Mark is a database engineer and has been creating a data warehouse for all of their loan history. He loves the folks he works with and they’ve been extremely flexible in helping us get to and from doctor’s visits with Suzi and the trio throughout the year. Now that we are all back on our feet, they are appreciative of Mark’s ability to apply himself even more.

Suzi is no longer teaching at Centaurus High School in the ESL department that used to exist in Boulder Valley Public Schools; rather, she loves being a stay at home mama to the trio. We are blessed that Mark can work many hours to provide us our beautiful home and life together. When the children reach preschool age, Suzi will pursue her educational endeavors again.

We’ve been able as a family to take a few trips that were certainly memorable. We drove in our Honda Odyssey to Sedona, Arizona for Suzi’s mother’s 70th birthday in early August. As our first road trip, we had many new systems to replicate upon arrival in Sedona. Until one is a parent, one rarely appreciates all the organizational plans parents must undertake to travel away from one’s safe nest with multiple children. We now adore our parents even that much more. We had a lovely visit in Sedona and soaked up the positive energy, hiked many of the local trails, swam at the community pools and even had friends on their honeymoon join us for dinner. We’ve loved the new abode that Grandma and Grandpa built in Sedona as it truly respects and showcases the beautiful natural landscape surrounding their property. We cannot help but be reminded of the sheer beauty of the Colorado River carving its way through the Grand Canyon; its beauty parallels that of Sedona’s worn away rock over the past million years to create the beautiful rock formations surrounding Sedona.
(http://www.sedona.biz/sedonageology.htm) We hope to return this summer and continue to see more of the majestic sights of our beautiful country.

We’ve watched the kiddos grow through their different stages in awe. Seeing them sleep and eat so much of their first five months was sweet and also exhausting. We never knew how parents ever managed to live with sleep deprivation and still carry on a job, social life and exercise routine. We’re now just reprioritizing for these different aspects to return into our lives as parents of triplets. When one child awakens in the middle of the night, we’re always praying that he or she will not awaken the other two. We’ve been blessed with more continuous nights of sleep since the trio’s first birthday, October 11, 2007. Thank goodness!

In November, we flew to Portland, Oregon. Those of you close to us know this was a huge undertaking for us. Suzi asked experienced moms to share their wisdom, and thankfully, we organized ourselves, purchased go-go babyz wheels to attach to our Britax Roundabout car seats and made the journey so smoothly, we were both surprised. We had a lovely visit with Mark’s family. We especially loved reuniting with Mark’s sister, Michelle, and her beautiful trio: Ashley, Andrew and Tyler whom the trio hadn’t yet met. We had a fabulous time with aunts and uncles, Nana and Papa, and cousins; we only felt it was just too short. We’d love to return to Oregon during the summer of 2009 and/or 2010.

The year closed with Mark and Suzi driving straight through the night from Denver to Sedona to celebrate Christmas with Suzi’s family, the Schumanns. We loved seeing Suzi’s siblings, Becky and Paulibus and their beautiful families. We missed seeing her eldest brother, Jim -who had just begun a new job and joined us in spirit -and his girlfriend, Victoria, and his son, Jimmy. We all hope to be together again soon.

Grandpa Jim and Grandma Pat jumped into helping with Marek, Maarten, and Monique upon arrival. They loved strolling though their community with the strollers and all of their grandchildren each day. We cherished our Christmas morning together and witnessing the joy of especially Tessa and Finn as they opened all of Santa’s gifts. Monique, Maarten, and Marek weren’t exactly in the know about what was happening. We celebrated not only Christ’s birth, but also Becky’s 39th birthday, Tom’s 40th birthday, and Grandpa and Grandma’s 45th wedding anniversary! So much to celebrate!

We’re feeling so fortunate, Mark and Suzi, to also ring in the new year with our 4th anniversary and Mark’s father’s birthday! Fun! Suzi did decide to accept the invitation to stay another week in Sedona with Monique, Marek and Maarten and have Grandma and Grandpa enjoy them even more. They were amazingly curious! Pushed all the dining room chairs throughout the first floor and made them into useful walkers for their fresh legs. They explored the Sedona park filled with just-the-right-size slides, swings, and play structures for the trio to become exhausted each day.

Each child is so very unique. They are similar, for sure, yet so very different. Parents always notice the subtleties; however, do we accurately keep track? Since Marek and Maarten are identical twins, they are certainly a bit of a challenge to differentiate at times who is doing what, when and how. Yet, when we slow ourselves down we have noticed that Marek is our talker. He first was the great giggler; fittingly, his first word was “tickle”. His vocabulary continues to expand; so far: tickle, doggie, cookie, mama, dada, nanny. As for his brother, Maarten, we have nicknamed him the great wiggler. He moved endlessly while he was inside of Suzi; causing many challenges when trying to record his heartbeat- those at the hospital can attest to the two months of fishing for the little babies. Maarten has used sign language as his mode of communication; on-off, fish, more, milk and others. The most consistent word he speaks is dada! He thinks his dada is every phone that rings; since Mommy consistently chats with him on speakerphone several times a day; in addition, to dada who comes home from work each day and brightens their dinner time immensely. He has learned “up” in the past several days and this has been great fun; when he says it, up he goes into Grandma Pat’s arms, Mommy’s or Daddy’s or Jani Nanny’s arms. It’s been loads of fun.

Similarly, Monique, has been relying more on her sign language for communication. She has now been saying, “up” and the response is equivalent to Maarten’s, up she goes. Monique has certainly excellent fine motor skills developing more quickly than her siblings; it’s not a race, it is just interesting to witness. She can carefully pick up her Cheerios, and delicately place them on the tip of her tongue! We are amazed by her ability to hold her own around her brothers; we are really working on sharing right now and being gentle with each other and our loving canines, Joy and Sunshine.

We love seeing the kids grow in their communication and us parents grow in our ability to take better care of ourselves with sleep, good food and more exercise.

We have so much to share; yet, visit us and join in the fun. We have been blessed with fabulous friends, neighbors, wonderful help from Jani Nanny Murray, Nanny Heidi Mitzelfeld, Nanny Pat Ryan, Janet Taapken, and Katherine Herzegh, Addie and Jack Hobbs who all come weekly for several hours to help with the love and care of Monique, Maarten, and Marek. We are so blessed and grateful.

May you please email MarkSuzi@VanAlstyne.com and/or give us a call 303 465 4704 and let us know how you are doing, too!

Sending love, peace and smiles to you throughout 2009,

Suzi, Mark, Maarten, Marek and Monique Van Alstyne
And, of course, Sunshine and Joy